United States: Over fifty percent of patients suffering from stage 4 melanoma live for at least ten years if treated with a combination of immunotherapy agents, a study shows.
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The combined treatment has shifted the prognosis for one form of skin cancer that used to be virtually fatal; some of its victims survive long enough to die of other unrelated causes.
The life expectancy of a few years back was much poorer, where just 5 percent of patients with advanced melanoma would survive for five years; many died within six to nine months of the melanoma diagnosis.
According to James Larkin, a consultant medical oncologist at the Royal Marsden NHS Foundation Trust and a professor at the Institute of Cancer Research, “The definition of cure is to return someone to their normal life expectancy for their age and state of health” the Guardian reported.
“Having treated a lot of these patients over the past ten years it seems that some are cured: they’re back to their normal lives, they’re getting on with things,” Larkin reported.
Rising number of cases
The incidence rate of melanoma in the UK is predicted to reach a record high, with more than 20,000 new cases this year, and these are mostly from the elderly population.
The many steps are also preventable and often result from an individual being overexposed to UV radiation.
It checked two drugs, ipilimumab and nivolumab, both immune checkpoint inhibitors for 945 patients having melanoma in its advanced stage 3 or 4 where the cancers were metastasizing.
The drugs target disabling “brakes” that exist in the immune system and are supposed to prevent the immune system from attacking normal body tissues. Minse those brakes off and the immune system is smart enough to wipe out those cancer cells.
Effective approach
The approach is very effective, which was also proved by the results of a study presented by the European Society for Medical Oncology in Barcelona Sunday and details published in the New England Journal of Medicine.
It revealed that the melanoma-specific survival rate of patients in the trial was more than overall survival, which means they were surviving longer to die from other diseases. In patients who received both drugs at the end of ten years, the melanoma-specific survival rate was 52 percent.
The results, as claimed by Larkin, were “remarkable.” Most of the lethal anti-cancer agents that eradicate tumor cells become ineffective after several years, while the effect of immune checkpoint inhibitors is sustainable.